Question Which SSD would you recommend for reliability foremost over speed etc?

[Coyle]

This will be my first SSD, going into an itx motherboard so build will be tight and while I really want to try out an SSD I'd rather not have to take it apart to replace a failed drive if possible.
The mobo has a couple M2 2280 (only going to use 1 for OS) so am interested in trying it but am concerned about the failure rate with them. I don't need the fastest for sure, but since the mobo supports PCIe 4.0 I'd like to use it; the main thing though is picking one that has low failures.
I still might use hdd for my long term storage and I probably could use a sata ssd for OS which would be easier to access but am really curious to try out the M2 (I don't turn my pc off so boot speed isn't a concern.)
Should I go with a nvme or something similar or would a sata ssd be a more reliable choice?

 

[Tech Junky]

Well, if it's a new board it's going to be NVME.

I use WD in my setups. Right now I ha e a pair of each SN850 and SN770 drives. They both work well.

The 850 is faster in single stream data copies but, the 770 matches or beats it in multithread copies.

I have other brands I've picked up over the years and they alls still run fine. Durability is better than a spinner but, then again I have some spinners about to turn 10yo as well.

If the mounts for drives is easier you could put in M2 adapters and run cables if you went with U.x drives that can be mounted elsewhere but still provide the NVME speed/durability.

 

[mikeymikec]

SATA vs NVMe - SATA SSDs get a lot less warm than NVMe SSDs, but there are likely three reasons for this: vastly reduced performance, larger surface area, and separation from other warm components and therefore better ventilation resulting.

Removing NVMe drives is usually easy, but the one beneath the shadow of my system's ginormous CPU HSF is likely to be trickier than most. Removing SATA drives is always easy (unless you have a very strange/cramped case - just re-read OP, ITX... so yes), but also bear in mind that cabling to SATA is somewhat more complicated.

One question I'd consider is whether the writing is on the wall for SATA (at least in some relevant way), for example my Haswell Z97 board had six SATA ports, my AMD7000 board only has four. Maybe in ten years that will drop to two? My current case isn't as SATA friendly as my old case was either.

In your position I'd recommend NVMe. I've done one ITX build (compared to at least a couple of hundred ATX/mATX builds), and trying to pack the cabling in for one optical and one SATA SSD wasn't fun. I think if I was planning another ITX build then I'd want to find out if my preferred PSU maker can provide shorter cables.

Brands - my preferred brand is Samsung these days; I only buy their PRO or EVO range models. I've bought lots of drives in my line of work, I've had a couple of failures and Samsung didn't give me any trouble over the warranty. I'd check that the firmware is up-to-date after OS install as Samsung had an issue a couple of years ago that was seemingly fixed with firmware updates.

 

[VirtualLarry]

reliability? intel.

 

[kschendel]

Brand doesn't matter as much as construction. If you are looking for longer term reliability, I'd avoid QLC drives. The ideal would probably be a 970 Pro, as it uses MLC, but you won't find any for a sane price (If you do, buy two and PM me!).

A 2.5" SATA drive is probably going to run cooler than any m.2 drive. Whether that translates to reliability is unclear. It's certainly not my experience; I have a zoo of different SSD brands, and the only one that's failed live was an older Samsung SATA drive.

 

[manly]

For a fresh build, NVMe is the easy choice. SATA is on the way out, so you will have fewer options for good drives.

We don't have Backblaze style stats on reliability, so nobody really knows what is most reliable. SSDs have gotten expensive since January 1st, so that changes the calculus IMO. Now you get to spend more money for less storage. As mentioned, WDC SN850X is quite good.

Keep in mind what the SS in SSD stands for: solid-state. Compared to spinning rust, I believe failure rates aren't low enough to stop doing backups, but aren't high enough to lose sleep over either.

reliability? intel.

No longer in the SSD business.

Brand doesn't matter as much as construction. If you are looking for longer term reliability, I'd avoid QLC drives. The ideal would probably be a 970 Pro, as it uses MLC, but you won't find any for a sane price (If you do, buy two and PM me!).

A 2.5" SATA drive is probably going to run cooler than any m.2 drive. Whether that translates to reliability is unclear. It's certainly not my experience; I have a zoo of different SSD brands, and the only one that's failed live was an older Samsung SATA drive.

Good luck avoiding QLC, which dominates the market now. I believe next up is PLC. But yeah, at least for now you should buy a TLC drive if you can budget for a high-end drive.

IIRC Samsung lies and calls its TLC "3-bit MLC" in at least one instance.

 

[mikeymikec]

We don't have Backblaze style stats on reliability

The SSD Edition: 2023 Drive Stats Mid-Year Review

Read the SSD Edition: 2023 Drive Stats Mid-Year Review and share your thoughts in the comments.

www.backblaze.com

Though it's not as diverse as their HDD usage is.

 

[manly]

The SSD Edition: 2023 Drive Stats Mid-Year Review

Read the SSD Edition: 2023 Drive Stats Mid-Year Review and share your thoughts in the comments.

www.backblaze.com

Though it's not as diverse as their HDD usage is.

Thanks, unfortunately this data has almost no utility. Like you said, only a few brands are represented; and the data they do have isn't going to help me with buying decisions.

I guess I could feel comfortable buying Seagate SSDs, except I don't even consider them much of an SSD vendor! And these are 250/500 GB SATA drives so can you extrapolate that to current NVMe drives? I guess the good news here is that AFR is low, which we all figured anyway.

And what is "DELLBOSS VD" anyway? A virtual disk?

 

[VirtualLarry]

No longer in the SSD business.

I could comment on how few people are willing to pay for real reliability.

 

[mikeymikec]

Thanks, unfortunately this data has almost no utility. Like you said, only a few brands are represented; and the data they do have isn't going to help me with buying decisions.

I guess I could feel comfortable buying Seagate SSDs, except I don't even consider them much of an SSD vendor! And these are 250/500 GB SATA drives so can you extrapolate that to current NVMe drives? I guess the good news here is that AFR is low, which we all figured anyway.

And what is "DELLBOSS VD" anyway? A virtual disk?

Agreed, it's not really of much use, I mentioned it mainly because I was recently aware of the report's existence and in future it's likely to be of more use (ie. challenging the assumption that they don't do such reviews for SSDs). A company that makes greater use of SSDs (say one that runs huge databases for its bread and butter) would likely have more useful SSD reliability statistics than Backblaze (which likely mainly uses SSDs to boot operating systems then the HDDs are doing the real heavy lifting).

There's also the fact that historically the storage device models that are pushing the boundaries of what's possible are the ones most likely to fail, so 250GB SSD failure statistics are likely to be very different to say =>4TB SSDs.

IIRC Samsung lies and calls its TLC "3-bit MLC" in at least one instance.

Not just Samsung, I'm sure I've seen Crucial at it, maybe WD too. An an alternative tactic I've encountered in recent years is simply not to state the write technique to the NAND at all even in product datasheets, so I've resorted to reviews to get to the truth.

Good luck avoiding QLC, which dominates the market now. I believe next up is PLC.

The thing is, if they're resorting to QLC or worse then HDD options become relevant again, at least for anyone looking to do sustained writes, and usually HDDs are way cheaper. I can't imagine how bad PLC would be because QLC is pretty dire.

 

[notposting]

Somewhere around 15 years of SSD/NVMe and it's been all Crucial for me. Combination of both MX and BX for the SSDs, and they're all still alive years later. Only a handful of NVMe but no failures either. All anecdotal for household use.

They do differentiate between product lines so you might need to go a step up. Though looking at the Backblaze data, a couple of those Seagates look pretty dang reliable.

 

[igor_kavinski]

https://www.amazon.com/480G-DC1000B-2280-SSD-Enterprise/dp/B083V9KG51/

Probably overkill for the OP's need but if reliability is what he wants, he can't get more of it than in a data center SSD.

 

[Mantrid-Drone]

No experience with NVMe yet although I have a 1TB FireCuda waiting for me to start the PC build I've been delaying for months.

My experience is all with SATA SSDs and like notposting I've had great reliability from the Crucial MX range.

 

[igor_kavinski]

7+ year MX300 user here